AFL star's wife Lynette Bolton shares emotional update on breast cancer battle: 'Yep I have cancer'

Lynette Bolton, the wife of former high-profile AFL player Jude Bolton, has shared a raw post about the emotional toll of her battle with breast cancer.

Bolton, 44, took to Instagram with a powerful post to talk about the moment she shaved her head as she battles the highly aggressive triple negative breast cancer she was diagnosed with last year.

The mother-of-two daughters, who has been documenting her battle with the disease, shared an update with her followers yesterday in which she laid bare her sorrow over losing her hair.

Watch the video above.

"I've only cried a handful of times during this whole cancer s--tshow," she started the post.

"I remember bawling my eyes out when I woke up in recovery after getting my port [and] when I tried cold capping.

"The day I turned up to chemo and got sent home because my liver levels were off. And the day I shaved my head.

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"For someone who's actually felt pretty 'well' through most of this… This one really got me.

"Up until then, I was mostly just getting on with life, still being 'me'.

"But shaving my head made it feel real in a way nothing else had. I looked in the mirror and just thought, 'Yep. I have cancer'. And I certainly don't love that feeling.

"It's not 'just hair'. It's everything else it represents. But… it is what it is."

The post came just three days after she shared another photo with Jude, a Sydney Swans Hall of Famer who played 325 games for the club and helped them to win two premierships before he retired from the game in 2013.

"Choose your partner as if your life depends on it… Because one day it might," she wrote alongside a photo of the two sharing a kiss.

It is just one of the many updates she has shared with her followers since announcing in December 2025 she had been diagnosed with breast cancer the previous month.

"So yesterday, big day, I got diagnosed with breast cancer," Bolton said in the video.

While the video was posted on December 20, it was filmed on December 4 and came 10 days after she first noticed she had a lump in her breast.

The following day she shared another video telling fans she had been diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, a fast growing and aggressive form of the disease, which required her to start chemotherapy immediately.

She lamented in the video the speed with which things were unfolding meant she had no choice but to ruin Christmas by telling her friends and family, including her two daughters, Siarra, 14, and Piper, 11.

Since then, she has shared the many highs and lows, including when she was sent home from a scheduled chemotherapy session because her liver was not coping with the treatment, and learning in March that genetic testing was negative, which came as a relief as it meant she had not passed any of the known inherited genes that cause breast cancer to her two daughters.

Earlier this week, she shared a video in response to those who say, "But you don't look like you have cancer".

"I actually get this a lot. And tbh most days I don't feel like I have cancer (whatever that actually feels like). I get up, do the lunches, reply to messages, get some steps in… and from the outside, it mostly just looks like me getting on with life," she wrote in the accompanying post.

"But other days it takes me 14 pills just to function and I don't even leave the house. (Yep. True story).

"That's the part you don't always see. The behind the scenes. And it's such a strange place to sit in. Feeling mostly normal one minute, yet not knowing whether you're up or down the next.

"Some days I've got more in me. Some days I don't. Right now I'm not trying to have it all together 100 per cent of the time. Or even 50 per cent. I'm just taking it as it comes and doing the best I can with whatever I've got that day.

"And I'm incredibly grateful for the support I'm feeling along the way."

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